


Step by Step

by suitesamba, veridari



Series: Finding Family [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Digital Art, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 04:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba, https://archiveofourown.org/users/veridari/pseuds/veridari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus remembers.  A vignette in the "Finding Family" universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step by Step

“Severus?” Harry’s soft voice drifts down the stairway and into the basement laboratory. Severus, intent on his work, hasn’t heard the door open.

“Just finishing up,” he calls out, his voice carrying across the room. He pauses, listening to Harry’s steps coming down the stairs. Heavier than usual. He smiles, shakes his head. Harry is seldom alone these days. “Is dinner ready?” he calls out.

Harry appears at the bottom of the stairs, Hannah asleep on his shoulder.

“Nearly,” Harry answers as he walks toward Severus. Severus leans over for a quick kiss and rests a hand on Hannah’s small head, brushing down the auburn curls.

Severus gestures toward the cauldron before him. “Fifteen more minutes and I can rest it for a few hours,” he says. “I’ll be up shortly.”

Harry peers into the cauldron. He sighs and adjusts Hannah’s weight. “More bruise balm? We sure go through a lot of it around here.” 

“How we managed to produce not one but two reckless Gryffindor children….”

Harry laughs and squeezes Severus’ hand. “Brave,” he corrects. He touches Severus’ hand and smiles. “Like their father.”

“Like their father indeed,” agrees Severus, smiling vaguely down at the potion. “When they fall, they get right up and have another go.”

He doesn’t look up as Harry leaves, occupied as he is with stirring the balm. But when, a few minutes later, he removes the stirring rod and cuts the flame beneath the cauldron, his eyes slide over to the piece of folded parchment Harry has left on the work table beside him, held down with a single white rose, undoubtedly from the heirloom rose garden they’d restored years ago when they bought the estate. He picks up the flower, smells its lingering fragrance, then opens the note.

[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/76484257@N02/7373909924/)

Even as his cock stirs in interest and he runs the pad of his thumb over the carefully inked words— _arse…lube…silk…_ —his eyes drift up toward the doorway where Harry disappeared only moments ago, the weight of their two-year old daughter heavy on his shoulder.

And Severus remembers.

Remembers the months and months when there were no footfalls on those stairs, and the day, that cold October evening, when he labored over the muscle relaxing potion as Harry came down again, bearing tokens of love, slowly, carefully, deliberately…on his own.

~*Eight Years Ago*~

Severus sat on one of the tall stools, potion in the cauldron on the table before him simmering evenly. He stirred it occasionally, counter-clockwise, watching it closely, and seemingly knowing exactly when to dip the wooden stirring rod into the pale blue potion.

The laboratory was quiet save the occasional crackle of the logs in the fireplace, the soft hissing of the steaming potion, and the quiet ticking of the mantel clock. Autumn had arrived, and the growing cold outdoors had descended first on the basement of the old manor house. Severus was already wearing his thick winter work robes to ward off the chill.

He was midway through twenty slow stirs when he heard another sound. The wind had picked up outside and the old house spoke more often now, creaking and moaning, squeaking and settling. He’d grown accustomed to these new noises, though, and finished his stirring cycle, holding the rod at an angle above the cauldron.

Another creak, and another.

Too close, too regular, too localized to be the wind on the shutters, the groaning of the house.

He looked up, eyes fixed on the open doorway and the stairway beyond it.

_No…._

The creaking had stopped now—but he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He listened intently, resisting speaking, not calling out to the man who was most certainly _not_ on the stairs, who could _not_ be there. Who was upstairs now, asleep on the sofa in front of the sitting room fire, resting after a morning spent with the physical therapist, pushing himself harder, earning his rest.

The man who had once visited him every day, who had left him tokens of love on the table beside his cauldrons. The man who had not walked down these stairs since the crocus had begun to bloom. Severus smiled vaguely. Harry loved the crocus and the promise of spring that opened with their purple petals.

He lowered the stirring rod into the potion, his mental timing automatic, and began the next series of counter clockwise rotations.

He was on number three when he heard another footfall, on seven when he heard the next, on eighteen when a loud creak told him that his visitor had stepped on the creaky third tread from the bottom.

The stair Harry had long ago learned to skip. 

His heart ached. He hoped that creak would not seem a failure to Harry.

Twenty stirs and he lifted the rod again, staring at the doorway. Listening to the silence.

He saw Harry out of the corner of his eye just as he began the next twenty stirs. Harry stood in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, holding on to the doorframe tightly, face pale, breathing too heavily.

Severus forced himself to continue stirring, just as he would have done six months ago. The potion was not a difficult one, but its preparation was long and required constant attention. Harry would need this particular muscle relaxant sooner than later now that he was more mobile. Severus resolutely stirred slowly, counting the rotations, as Harry let go of the door frame and walked carefully around the work table toward him. He placed a morsel of dark chocolate, wrapped in gold foil, on the table beside Severus then moved carefully behind him, wrapping tired, shaky arms around Severus’ middle, resting his head against his shoulder. Sighing.

[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/76484257@N02/7373909988/)

  
Severus began the count again, acutely aware of Harry behind him, of the slight tremble in his arms, of his attempts to slow his too-fast breathing. The arms tightened around his middle. Severus finished the count and lifted the rod again.

“Kreacher popped over to Hogwarts to pick up dinner,” Harry said after his breathing slowed. “Minerva insisted,” he added by way of explanation less Severus wonder why they were dining on chicken legs and treacle tart.

“I will be up shortly,” said Severus, resisting, with difficulty, the urge to pick Harry up, carry him back upstairs and tuck him into bed. Chastise him for overdoing it. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” breathed Harry. “What do you need?”

“Something sweet. A bit of chocolate, perhaps.”

“Ah. I have just the thing.” Harry’s tired voice was teasing as he reached over for the foil-wrapped delicacy. Severus knew it was one of the dark chocolate and hazelnut concoctions Percy and Penelope had sent over, the ones they both loved so much, the ones Harry always pretended to hide from him. He counted stirs again as Harry unwrapped the chocolate and when he reached twenty and rested the stirring rod, Harry pressed the morsel into his mouth, then, giving him barely enough time to taste the chocolate, pressed a kiss to his lips.

“I’ve more of that you know,” he said with a small smile.

“Oh?” answered Severus. “More chocolate or more kisses?”

“Either. Both.” He stepped back away from Severus, steadying himself with a hand on the heavy worktable. “Finish your work. I need to go help Kreacher.” He pushed away from the table, then grabbed for it as he began to wobble.

“Harry—” Severus’ hand came out unbidden, grasped Harry by his upper arm, holding on only a moment, until Harry was steady on his feet, then dropped to hang at his side.

He watched Harry move back to the door, sliding his hand over the table, the back of the stools, trailing his fingers along the wall and door frame.

Heard the slow creak of the stairs as he stirred one last round. The snick of the door latch as Harry closed it behind him.

~*^*^*~

To this day, he cannot eat dark chocolate with hazelnuts without his heart filling, without tasting Harry.

He covers the bruise balm—he has developed a variety for children that smells of bananas instead of medicinal herbs—and walks to the cabinet against the wall. He places the white rose on the shelf. It is fresh and alive amidst a collection of dried stems and petals. He reaches out to a different shelf and drops a small vial of clear viscous liquid into his robe pocket then skits his fingers over other bottles, some fragrant, some astringent, some imbued with ingredients to cool the skin, or heat it, or impart the feeling of pressure slowly oh so slowly increasing. Experiments, all of them, for his personal use, and Harry’s.

But today Harry brought a white rose so Severus’ fingers close over a bottle not oft-used, with an unguent inside that will bring early winter to Harry’s skin, make his nipples hard, cold pebbles, draw his bollocks up against his body. Harry can nearly come from the feeling of Severus’ warm breath on the cold, sensitive skin of his nipples, will buck upward into the promised warmth when his hands and feet are carefully, lovingly restrained with lengths of silk.

The second bottle joins the first, resting for the time being in Severus’ wide and deep robe pocket. 

Two hours ‘til bedtime. He will not rush it. He will read an extra-long story tonight, will sing all five verses of the Little Lost Niffler song, will make sure every doll, every plushie, gets its own good-night kiss. 

And Harry will watch, impatient, hearing the click of the vials in Severus’ pocket, longing for his touch, for his breath, the want more poignant for the drawn out wait.

And when Severus takes him at last, he will be shaking with need, the silk sash tying his wrists to each other, to the headboard before him. Harry will cry out his name, beg for more, want it harder, and faster, and deeper. He will _ache_ for it, for Severus’ touch, for his breath on his skin, for the murmuring in his ear, the stretch, the burn, the oil drizzled there…and there…and _there._

Upstairs now, Severus bends to pick up a discarded shoe and a purple hair-tie and stands again, smiling at a sudden movement then striding forward to meet his charging son half-way.

The promised passion is tucked away now, pocketed with the potions, to be pulled out later and unstoppered. Severus is all father now, listening with interest as his small son chatters in his ear then hugs his neck and whispers, “I missed you today, Papa.”

Hannah has her fingers in the pudding already, and she holds them out gleefully to him as he puts Michael down. Harry shakes his head but Severus laughs, and Michael laughs, then Harry takes up a fingerful of the pudding and holds it out to Severus.

Michael and Hannah both laugh as Severus takes Harry’s finger in his mouth, sucking it longer than necessary. 

His husband is strong, and healthy, and hearty.

He will never get his fill of Harry.


End file.
